Publications

Follow the links below to find all my digital publications.

 
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You can now read my newest article Tom Nook, Capitalist or Comrade?: On Nook Discourse and the Millennial Housing Crisis in The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association. This article is open access, click the blue PDF button to download.

Abstract

Many millennial Animal Crossing players will experience the joy of paying off their beautiful three-floor in-game home only to have that joy cut short by the crushing realization that they may never experience homeownership in real life. Who do we then take that anger and disappointment out on? The capitalists with a stranglehold on the housing market? The governments and companies holding our lives hostage for student loan debt? Our landlords who take most of our income each month so we can keep a roof over our heads? Our bosses who are criminally underpaying us for our labour? Or is it a fictional racoon? Arguments about the ethics of Animal Crossing’s non-playable character Tom Nook are inescapable in online discussions about the Animal Crossing series. These discussions generally have two sides: either Tom Nook is a capitalistic villain who exploits the player’s labour for housing, or he is a benevolent landowner who helps the player out in hard times. Vossen first sets the stage by discussing the cultural significance of both the Animal Crossing series, focusing in on Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020), and the millennial housing crisis. She then examines the many tweets, memes, comics, and articles that vilify Tom Nook (and a few that defend him) and asks: are we really mad at Tom, or are we mad at the cruelty and greed of the billionaires, bosses, and landowners in our real lives? Vossen argues that what she calls “Nook discourse” represents the radical social potential of Animal Crossing to facilitate large-scale real-world conversations about housing, economic precarity, class, and labour that could help change hearts and minds about the nature of wealth.

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You can now read my article There and Back Again: Tolkien, Gamers, and the Remediation of Exclusion through Fantasy Media in Feminist Media Histories. This article is sadly not open access, if you do not have access through an academic institution please reach out to me through my contact form and I will happily send you a copy.

Abstract

The cultural ubiquity of The Lord of the Rings has shaped our contemporary assumptions about what the fantasy genre looks like, and these assumptions have in turn determined to a great extent what video games look like both historically and today. The Lord of the Rings and video games are, sadly, both well known for their lack of diversity, and this article argues that that is no coincidence. Focusing on the impact of the life and work of J. R. R. Tolkien, it traces fantasy media from the birth of the genre to the present day to discuss how exclusion is remediated, normalized, and justified. It challenges the racism of the “historical accuracy” fallacy and details how very old sexist literary tropes are continually remediated into contemporary fantasy video games. It asks: What can past discourses surrounding diversity in fantasy media tell us about the resistance to diversity in video games in the present?

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Click the button below to download my dissertation “On the Cultural Inaccessibility of Gaming: Invading, Creating, and Reclaiming the Cultural Clubhouse.” While this is a PhD dissertation, it was written with a public audience in mind, and has been read and enjoyed by academics and gaming enthusiasts alike!

Abstract

This dissertation uses intersectional feminist theory and Autoethnography to develop the concept of “cultural inaccessibility”. Cultural inaccessibility is a concept I’ve created to describe the ways that women are made to feel unwelcome in spaces of game play and games culture, both offline and online. Although there are few formal barriers preventing women from purchasing games, playing games, or acquiring jobs in the games industry, this dissertation explores the formidable cultural barriers which define women as “space invaders” and outsiders in games culture. Women are routinely subjected to gendered harassment while playing games, and in physical spaces of games culture, such as conventions, stores, and tournaments. This harassment and abuse is intensified toward female journalists, developers and academics who choose to speak publicly about sexism within the culture, particularly since the 2014 rise of Gamergate. This dissertation illustrates the parallel development of games culture and women’s continued exclusion from it, from the exclusionary sexism of J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing to the development of the “Gamer” as a fixed (and stereotypically cis-male) identity in the pages of video game magazines of the 1980s and ‘90s, to the online “Gamer activism” of today. At the same time, I also explore my own experiences as a female gamer and academic in the 2010s, using projects I have been a part of as a means of reflecting on developments in the broader culture.

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Why the “Gamer Dress” is about so much more
than just a dress

As someone who loves both video games and a good dress, I instantly wanted to tweet about the “esports dress” aka the “gamer dress” that Cranium Apparel unveiled on March 2nd but I just couldn’t put into so few words the exasperation and horror I felt upon opening the tweet. As one game dev pointed out, the dress, a short red and black skater dress with a skull and adjustable cleavage zipper on the front, looks exactly like those ugly “gaming chairs” that have become an apparently ubiquitous symbol of “gamer” identity. It is 0% surprising that this is what an “esports dress” would look like as it has a similar appearance to other esports apparel, with that general Alienware-esque techno-masculine vibe… but in a dress.

Games of the Year 2018 - Labourers in a Dangerous Time

Third Person asked me to write up a list of my favourite games I played in 2018. What follows is an exploration of how the five best games I played in 2018 made me feel about life and labour. I talk about Night in the Woods, Donut County, Stardew Valley, Spyro: Reignited, and Bendy and the Ink Machine.

"Despite being about a group of anthropomorphic animals Night in the Woods is one of the most realistic pieces of media I had ever consumed."

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Publish AND Perish: On Publishing, Precarity and Poverty in Academia

This journal article is about the problem with journal articles. It examines the interconnected relationship between poverty, academia, and academic publishing. “Publish AND Perish” looks at the ways that the uncompensated labour of young and hopeful grad students is exploited in the world of academic publishing and what First Person Scholar is trying to do about it.

“We value some research more than others. Journal articles were once about sharing research, now that function is secondary to the economic function of creating journal articles. Journal articles are currency in the academic economy"